Almost Home A Novel [Paperback]

Patrick, his sister, and his mother have come to Paradise Valley, Arizona, in the bitter aftermath of his father's suicide. As his mother turns to alcohol for solace and his sister finds companionship in the town's wild crowd, Patrick spends lonely days in school and works the graveyard shift at a local gas station. His isolation ends with the arrival of Elizabeth, a talented musician with family problems of her own. The depth of their feelings emerges when a drug-dealing co-worker involves Patrick in a scheme that not only tests his courage but his loyalty -- to his family, to the memory of his father, and to Elizabeth.Almost Homeis an engaging exploration of the relationships between coincidence and providence, betrayal and forgiveness, love and salvation.T. M. McNallyis the author ofLow Flying Aircraft,winner of the Flannery O'Connor Award for Short Fiction, andUntil Your Heart Stops,aNew York TimesNotable Book. He teaches in the Creative Writing program at Arizona State University.Chapter 1

He was the boy with a dog. Standing in the first row, singing, she'd turn sometimes when she heard his voice: first tenor, clear and bright. For days he'd wear the same baggy sweater -- burgundy; worn at the elbows, covered always with lint. Once, before her family moved to Paradise Valley; her father had promised she could have a dog.

He wasn't from here either. In 1978, nobody was. He was new -- a transfer, midsemester, from Illinois. He was quiet, and shy, and strangely confident of his own voice, as if just waiting to be discovered. Standing there, with him behind her in the choir, his sweater all full of fur, she would listen to him pierce a high C. She knew a lot about scales, would spend ten minutes a day, the start of each practice, warming up on her flute. In the afternoons, after arriving home, having departed the bus, having walked the three long blocks in the sunshine home, there she would wait for her fatherlM